On June 13, 2003, China Youth Daily reporter Lu Yuegang published a public letter online addressing a speech given on May 24 that year to top newspaper cadres by Zhao Yong (赵勇), secretary of the standing committee of the Chinese Communist Youth League, publisher of the newspaper. In his letter, Lu Yuegang said Zhao’s speech was “full of sermonizing, intimidation and ignorance.” Summarized, Zhao Yong’s three main points had been: 1) whoever doesn’t fall in line with the CCYL will be sent packing, 2) China Youth Daily is a publication of the CCYL, not an ‘abstract major newspaper’ [in other words, not a professional journalistic enterprise], and 3) the newspaper could not operate on the principle of “idealism”.
For more than a century the tradition of press professionals in China has held that “the responsibility of defending the nation lies with the people” (天下兴亡，匹夫有责). This sense of idealism and purpose could be seen in the Shiwubao (时务报) of the late Qing Dynasty (19th and early 20th centuries), in the Ta Kung Pao of the Republican Period. For more than a half century, the news industry in China was colored strongly with a sense of justice and social conscience. Economic reforms in the 1980s brought the reemergence of this sense of idealism among the generation of journalists who had experienced the Anti-Rightist Movement of the 1950s and the Cultural Revolution. China Youth Daily was home to a number of such journalists, including Lu Yuegang and Li Datong.
In the preface to Zan Aizong’s book The Fourth Estate [Introduction to Zan at Independent Chinese Pen Center], Lu Yuegang explains “idealism” in the following way: “All editors and reporters will face these sorts of questions – Why do we interview and write? What are our basic rights and interests? In our social environment, whose interests does public opinion serve? In what way can we carry out objective and impartial reporting? In what way can we get nearer social truths? In a normal social environment these questions don’t constitute questions, or merely become questions of technique. But for us [Chinese] they are question we cannot turn away from. Some people say I’m an ‘idealist’. An idealist’s action is characterized by ‘acting for something even if you know that thing is nearly impossible’, and in the process drawing the attention of the world. Strictly speaking, I’m not that kind of idealist. Rather, my standard for idealism is ‘keeping truth as one’s creed even if it means losing one’s head’, basically not hesitating to shed blood or lose one’s head for some belief or concept about which you are determined.”

“Supervision by public opinion”, sometimes also translated “watchdog journalism”, has featured strongly in discussions of the role of media and press freedom in China since the late 1980s. In some cases the term can be used, particularly by proponents of an independent and professional press, as a stand-in term for “press freedom”, which is itself used only very cautiously by Chinese media (usually only in pejorative references to “Western press freedom”). Seeing the term as a Chinese cognate of Western “watchdog journalism,” they envision news media operating as a fourth estate, casting light on social, political and economic problems in China.
But “supervision by public opinion” has also been used frequently by officials in China to talk about the role of news media – under state control – in uncovering issues of official corruption and abuse of power on a range of issues, particularly at lower levels of the bureaucracy. At the Thirteenth National Congress of the CPC in 1987, party leaders said in their official report that news and propaganda tools (宣传工具) [i.e., official news media] should “serve a watchdog role (发挥舆论监督作用), supporting the criticisms of the public and [targeting] errors and shortcomings [in government work], opposing bureaucratism, and struggling against various unhealthy tendencies (不正之风).”
In the official view, this “supervision by public opinion” must be subject to the overarching political demands of party leaders. Since 1989 the term has stood in tension with the cardinal control concept of “guidance of public opinion”.
On January 24, 1994, then President Jiang Zemin said in addressing a national forum on propaganda work that “supervision by public opinion should have an eye toward assisting with the forward work of the party and the government in resolving real issues, promoting unity among the people and safeguarding social stability.”

The term “mouthpiece” has been used to describe Party media since the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. At Yan’an, the Liberation Daily described itself as “the Party’s mouthpiece, the mouthpiece of this great collective.” “We comrades who work at the newspaper are just one part of the Party organization,” the paper said, “but we must all, as one a body united, act according to the Party’s will. Each word and line, each character and sentence, must take the Party into consideration” (see “The Party and Party Papers”/”The Press Theory of the Liberation Daily”, Selections From Chinese Journalism History, Zhang Zhihua, editor, China People’s University Press, 1999, pg. 257). During a November 28, 1989, seminar on journalism, Jiang Zemin said, “Our country’s newspapers, broadcast and television are all the mouthpieces of the Party, the government and the people. This should be sufficient to explain the character of [Chinese] journalism and its important place in the work of the Party and the nation”. In an address following an inspection tour of China Central Television’s investigative program “News Probe” on October 7, 1998, State Council Premier Zhu Rongji offered the epigraph: “Supervisor of public opinion (舆论监督), mouthpiece of the masses, mirror of government, pioneer of reform.” This marked the first time “mouthpiece” had been used alone in this context, as “mouthpiece of the masses.” Zhu’s usage did not enter the canon of Party terms, however, and the official usage remains as “mouthpiece of the Party and the people.”

The latest policy buzzword to hit China’s political scene in March 2006, “Eight Honors and Eight Disgraces” encapsulates Hu Jintao’s effort to carry out a campaign of moral rectification, improving the overall behavior of people at all levels of Chinese society. Mostly for political show, the policy is designed to mollify Leftist elements within the Party who have spoken out against the excesses brought on by China’s commercialization drive. The first reference to the term came on March 4 as Hu made a speech on “Socialist honor and grace” to the Chinese Political Consultative Conference. On March 6, China’s top propaganda official, politburo member Li Changchun, called on all levels of Chinese society to implement the “spirit” of Hu Jintao’s policy speech in order to “form the stable moral basis for a Socialist harmonious society”. Hu Jintao listed the “Eight Honors and Disgraces” as follows: “Loving the Mother Country is honorable, harming the Mother Country is disgraceful; Serving the People is honorable, neglecting the People is disgraceful; Upholding science is honorable, blindness and ignorance are disgraceful; Hard work is honorable, idleness disgraceful; Unity and cooperation are honorable, using others for profit is disgraceful; Honesty and keeping one’s word are honorable, seeing personal gain and forgetting justice is disgraceful; Respecting laws and regulations is honorable, disobeying laws and regulations is disgraceful; Suffering for the struggle is honorable, conceit and lasciviousness are disgraceful”.

This is one among a litany of terms relating to ethical abuses in Chinese media. It has never been clearly defined, but can be generally understood as the practice of releasing information in the form of a news report in return for gains personally or for one’s media organization [definition at Modern Broadcasting website].
Some sources trace the phenomenon to an early column in Shanghai’s Wenhui Bao into which “news” was routinely sold. At that time reporters called such exchanges of news for cash “food coupon news” (饭票新闻).
An article on Sina.com identifies six forms of paid-for news, as follows:
1. Receiving money or other forms of benefit in exchange for news coverage;
2. Doing news coverage in exchange for advertising or circulation benefitss or sponsorship;
3. Forcing money or other forms of personal or institutional benefit by threatening negative news coverage (“news extortion”).
4. Media editors or bosses demanding their subordinates play a role in revenue creation, thus blurring the line between business and editorial;
5. Exchanging news with other media or journalists for payment or other benefit;
6. Public relations companies doing so-called “news reporting” on behalf of their clients and paying for space or airtime.
Forms of paid-for news, however, are constantly evolving. One article by People’s Daily described how some journalists work mention of so-called “clients” (those who have paid them for coverage) into stories in an indirect way, for example when addressing more general topics.

“Emphasizing positive news” has been a guiding principle of China’s Central Propaganda Department (中宣部) since at least 1984. At a February 1995 conference of editors in chief of provincial-level newspapers, propaganda minister Ding Guangen said: “By supporting unity and stability, emphasizing positive news and speaking with one voice, we have achieved success in setting examples, leading and encouraging [the people] (People’s Daily, February 27, 1995). Ji Bingxuan, a deputy propaganda minister, said: “The relationship between positive and negative news must be well-managed. We must always support the guiding principle, which is to encourage unity and stability by emphasizing positive news. This principle must be followed with news reports … China is so vast and diverse, its development so unequal. While some areas are advanced, others lag far behind. Our country’s social development is fraught with contradiction, and problems appear often in many places. Suppose problems arise in each of our more than 2,800 counties. How those problems are viewed, and how they are reported – that is a question that must be treated correctly … The influence of propaganda is extensive. Failing to carefully analyze [content], or allowing negative reports to become too numerous or careless, results not only an incomplete picture of events but misleads the public, who begin to imagine problems are piling up. Such a slide in social morale negatively impacts social stability, the consequences of which may be incalculable” (See”新闻宣传要把好关把好度”, Press Frontline (新闻战线), March 2004.)

By some Chinese accounts, “fake news”, or xujia xinwen, has plagued news media in China since at least the Cultural Revolution, at which time media fabricated news to suit the political purposes of the Gang of Four. It is an extremely fuzzy term, and obviously, while it may be used by Chinese officialdom in campaigns against news regarded as unprofessional (or against party directives), could in its broadest sense (though not the official one) overlap with party propaganda itself.
When looking at fake news in mainland China, one of the toughest challenges is to separate genuine calls for professionalism from moves to control news unfavorable to the party. Over the last two decades, as economic reforms have moved ahead, the problem of fake news has certainly grown more serious. Many officials and academics point to the commercialization of media industry and intensified market competition as root causes – the need for a political reform and a more independent role for journalism as a “profession” is not addressed openly.
In June 2005, the Central Propaganda Department held a forum to discuss the issue. Reading between the lines, their definition of “fake news” predictably includes that which falls outside the purview of state news control, or “guidance of public opinion” (舆论导向). They mention the following tendencies in fake news: (1) more fake news is being outright fabricated, using flights of the imagination rather than real news materials; (2) more news is being exaggerated by media to generate public buzz; (3) there is more fake foreign news (including that generated by domestic journalists and that taken from foreign news sources); (4) non-journalists from different fields of the society are participating in the “creation of news”; (5) some well-known “mainstream” media also taking part in the creation and distribution of fake news; (6) the Internet is amplifying the influence and reach of fake news.
Writing in late 2005, one propaganda official for a local News Commentary Group (阅评组) in China addressed fake news and its causes: (1) journalists do not do work hard enough to verify the reliability of information in their stories; (2) journalists interpret stories in such a way as to exaggerate their importance (in other words, sensationalize them); (3) editors and reporters, knowing there are factual problems, modify problematic portions in such a way as to push the report through, circumventing controls; (4) some journalists lack the common sense necessary to distinguish true from false; (5) management practices are poor (by publication officials, top editors, etc) and there are no methods in place to ensure investigative reports conducted in areas outside the publication’s home turf are checked for accuracy. Beginning in 2001, The Journalist Monthly (新闻记者), a magazine on news media published by the Shanghai Academy for Social Sciences, began publishing an annual listed of “Top Ten Fake News”. Results from 2001 to 2005 are available on the publication’s website, or here through Xinhua News Agency.
[Posted by Brian Chan, May 11, 2006, 12:30pm]